Justice Watch: The Alliance for Justice Blog

November 2012

This evening the Senate scheduled a vote on Monday for Paul Grimm, nominee to the United States District Court for the District of Maryland.Beginning at 5 p.m. on Monday there will be up to 30 minutes of debate on his nomination, so he will likely receive a confirmation vote at or shortly before 5:30 p.m.Grimm was nominated on Feb. 16, 2012, and he has been pending for 289 days, despite facing no substantive opposition.

Michael Shea

This evening the Senate also entered into an agreement to vote on Michael P. Shea, nominee to the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut, “at a time to be determined by the Majority Leader, in consultation of the Republican Leader.”Thirty minutes of debate will precede the vote.Though an exact date and time for the vote has not yet been scheduled, agreements like these are somewhat common, and the Senate typically sets a vote soon after entering into such an agreement.Shea was nominated on Feb. 2, 2012, and he was reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on a bipartisan vote of 15-3.

In addition to Grimm and Shea, there are 17 other nominees awaiting votes on the Senate floor, all of whom the Senate could—and should—have voted on months ago.

In addition to obstructing scores of judicial nominees, the abuse of rules, particularly the filibuster, has doomed one essential piece of legislation after another, such as energy and climate legislation, the DREAM Act, and the Employee Free Choice Act. That’s why AFJ is among the leaders of a coalition called Fix The Senate Now. And now, in a new report, AFJ is connecting the dots – illustrating the direct link between Republican stalling tactics and the crisis on the federal bench.

We support modest reforms to restore balance to the legislative process. America simply cannot function with a Senate in paralysis.

[UPDATE 3:40 p.m.: SCOTUSBlog reports that the Court took no action on these cases at today’s conference. The next opportunity for the Court to issue orders will be at 9:30 a.m. Monday.]At their Conference today, the Justices will consider petitions raising federal constitutional issues related to same-sex marriage. These are the most significant cases these nine Justices have ever considered, and probably that they will ever decide.

I have never before seen cases that I believed would be discussed two hundred years from now. Bush v. Goreand Obamacare were relative pipsqueaks. The government’s assertion of the power to prohibit a loving couple to marry, or to refuse to recognize such a marriage, is profound. So is the opposite claim that five Justices can read the federal Constitution to strip the people of the power to enact the laws governing such a foundational social institution.

Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) recently responded to a letter sent to him from 16 national and Iowa groups criticizing him for unnecessary delays in confirming judicial nominees. In his response Grassley claimed that:

“[F]or the four years of this administration, we approved 160 nominations, and during the same period of time in the last Bush administration, there were 120 nominations.”

This statement is both wrong and intentionally misleading.

First off, Grassley is comparing the first four years of the Obama Administration to the second four years of the Bush Administration. This is not “the same period of time.” Second, this is particularly misleading because Bush had a comparatively huge number of confirmations in his first term—202 in fact (see chart below). During Bush’s second term, there simply were not that many vacancies to fill.

With his statistical slight-of-hand, Grassley is trying both to minimize his—and his fellow Republicans’— obstruction of President Obama’s nominees during the last four years and make himself look reasonable!

You might expect more transparency and honesty from the ranking member of the venerable Senate Judiciary Committee. Instead, it seems, we’re getting one more attempt to mislead the public and obstruct nominees going forward. Iowans—and Americans—deserve better.